


unstoppable force, immovable object

by bambirouge



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Amnesia, Based on Moonwalk MV, Blood, M/M, Minor Character Death, Spaceships, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28993170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bambirouge/pseuds/bambirouge
Summary: Yukhei was returning from the city when the sky cleaved itself in two and spat out a battered spacecraft.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: Challenge #4 — Awaken The World





	unstoppable force, immovable object

**Author's Note:**

> OH my god many thanks to the mods of ALW fest for being so accommodating! this is a little preview of a much bigger universe that's been in the works for a long, long time—excited to share it with you!

Yukhei was returning from the city when the sky cleaved itself in two and spat out a battered spacecraft.

It tried to have a graceful landing; a parachute deployed seconds after the ship hurtled through the slice in the skin of the sky and Yukhei watched with his hands over his ears—a great hissing threatened to swallow the world whole—while the reserve chute only deployed halfway.

He heard Kun yelling at him already about getting into trouble. It didn’t take much to imagine it. But his feet changed course before he could stop them, and he found himself running toward the wreckage with his heart pounding.

When he approached it, the sinking sun was beginning to stain the sky with brilliant colors; the ship’s brilliant white exterior reflected each pink streak of a cloud that formed overhead. The door was bent, and Yukhei could barely fit his hand inside. But he did, hissing at the metal scraping his knuckles raw, and found a lever to pull on so hard that its movement caused him to fall backward into the sand.

The ship’s interior was just as white as its exterior. It looked relatively harmless, no secret weapon, no doom sludge containing a pathogen to wipe out the dwindling population, but it didn’t feel entirely welcome either. The craftsmanship was strange, and unfamiliar, and as Yukhei stepped in cautiously, he was filled with a sense of dread.

There were two men in the seats of the cockpit.

Yukhei’s stomach fluttered as he peered around to look at the pilots’ faces; one, with full lips and an angular jaw, was bloodied and bruised, with one eye swollen shut. Yukhei swallowed, nearly numb with adrenaline, and held two shaky fingers to the man’s pulse point. He felt nothing.

The other was smaller, still angular but in a more delicate way; he was beautiful, even upside down, even with dirt and blood smeared across his face. He looked slightly less damaged, and hope flared in Yukhei’s chest when he checked the man’s pulse and felt a steady beating.

Without a second thought, or maybe even a first one, Yukhei unclipped the man from his seat. He lifted him over his shoulder before bidding the other pilot a solemn, silent goodbye, and carried the man out into the desert.

 _“Who the fuck is that?”_ Kun shrilled when Yukhei reached the motel. The journey back was long, and sweltering, and Yukhei had long since stopped thinking about what he was going to tell Kun.

“Pilot,” he gasped in return. “I should—I’ll quarantine in the bus.”

Dejun burst through the door of the motel, followed by Sicheng, and the two of them stopped where Kun stood about fifteen feet away from Yukhei.

“A _pilot?”_ Kun said. “What pilot did you find in the trade center? Are you hurt? Is he—”

“Not in the trade center.” Yukhei shook his head, sinking to his knees out of exhaustion. “I went to...I...”

“The ship that fell from the sky.” Sicheng took a step forward. “It couldn’t have been far from the city. You went to it, didn’t you?”

Yukhei nodded. Kun went deathly pale, reaching an arm out to tug Sicheng back.

“Are you fucking crazy?” he murmured. “You could get us all killed. He could be infected with something.”

“I thought there might be food, or—I don’t know, valuable trade inside—”

“You could get us _killed,_ Yukhei!” Kun scrubbed at his forehead. “Go. Go to the bus. I’ll leave food out in the morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kun didn't say another word. He turned and disappeared back into the motel, leaving Sicheng and Dejun watching Yukhei on the ground.

“Who is he?” Dejun asked. Yukhei shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

It took until nearly sunrise again for the man to wake.

Yukhei had fallen asleep on the rug in the bus with his kerchief still in hand, wet with water that he tried to drip into the man’s mouth. He was shaken from slumber by a hand grasping his pantleg, at first thinking that Dejun had snuck into his room to bother him, but when he opened his eyes the man was gazing up at him from the floor.

“Whoa, whoa—hey, you’re awake.” Yukhei sat up fully, setting the kerchief aside. “Can you move? Can you speak?”

The man let go of Yukhei’s pants and brought a hand to the back of his neck.

_“Ow.”_

Yukhei barked a laugh, surprised. The man grimaced and attempted to move his head to the side, but hissed when he’d only rotated partway.

“It’s your neck?”

The man nodded, only minutely. “Hurts like a fucking bitch.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

The man’s hands moved from his neck to his chest, then down to his hips. He bent both of his knees and rotated his ankles. He lifted his shoulders and cried out.

 _“Fuck!_ Ow. My shoulder’s screwed.” And then, “...I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“You are. I found you after your ship crashed.”

The man squeezed his eyes shut, brow furrowing. “Just me?”

Yukhei looked at the carpet. “There was another pilot, but...he didn’t make it.”

The man took a deep, shaky breath. “Fuck. Johnny.”

Silence settled thick like an oncoming storm into the dry air. The man’s chest moved rapidly, although he appeared to be trying to calm himself down, and his lip turned nearly white from the force with which he bit down on it.

“I’m sorry,” Yukhei murmured. “He was already dead by the time I reached the ship.”

The man nodded, jaw muscles jumping. Yukhei watched his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

“And you?” he asked. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of thanking for saving my life?”

“I’m Yukhei. What’s your name?”

“Ten.”

“Ten.” Yukhei turned the word over on his tongue. “What...what happened to you? Where did you come from?”

“Far from here.” Ten grimaced again, and when he turned his head a trickle of blood dripped from his nostril. “I...”

“Here, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk more.” Yukhei reached behind Ten’s head and upper back and lifted him upright; once he got him propped against the stack of crates used as a makeshift table, he retrieved his kerchief to dab at Ten’s nose.

“We did it,” Ten warbled, his words slurred. He smiled. “I made it. They said it wouldn’t work.”

“Who? Said what wouldn’t work?”

Ten’s eyes slid shut again as another drop of blood trailed down his upper lip.

“The wormhole.”

///

Ten slept the rest of the day, and the day after that, although he woke a few times to request water. Kun was waiting for Yukhei on the third day when he went to pick up food from the front door of the motel.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

Kun nodded, arms crossed. “Is he awake?”

“Sometimes.” Yukhei looked back at the bus. “He says he came through a wormhole.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Did that thing in the sky look very possible to you?”

Kun chewed on his thumbnail but didn’t deny it.

When Ten woke again and stayed awake, the first thing he did was beg.

“Please,” he said, “I need to get back. If you could just take me to the ship, I could find out what’s wrong—”

“—You’re too weak still, what if—”

 _“Please.”_ Ten grasped Yukhei’s arm. “You don’t know how important this is. For your world, too. Look around.”

Yukhei glanced out the window as the red dirt, at the sun beating down, unprotected, on the Earth’s surface.

“You haven’t got much time left here. The technology on the ship, if I make it back, could be the answer.” Ten leaned in closer. “I _need_ to see my ship. I need to fix it.”

It was the first time that Yukhei realized he had a hard time telling Ten ‘no’.

The sun was near setting again when they reached the ship, Ten leaning on Yukhei’s shoulder. Yukhei stopped every now and then to let him rest, but Ten was insistent that they get there as soon as possible.

 _“Fuck,”_ Ten spat when he got at the engine, which was tucked under a panel in the floor. “The fragmentor is fried. God, all four of the capsules are fucking _fried!”_ He hit the wall in frustration, then curled in on himself.

“Please be careful.”

“I need parts. Expensive parts.” Ten looked up at Yukhei. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any government spacecraft we could steal from, would you? They’d definitely have—”

“—Hey, hey, whoa, I’m not trying to get myself killed. My family, we like to keep our heads down.”

“Your family?”

“My...” Yukhei searched for the word. “They’re _like_ my family. You haven’t met them yet.”

Ten sighed. “Well, I can’t fix this without new parts.”

Yukhei considered it. He had no reason to trust or help Ten besides the fact that he witnessed Ten come from the impossible, but...

“I might know a guy.”

///

Yangyang resided in a hangar outside the city, a little closer to the trade center than Yukhei was comfortable with. He and Yukhei crossed paths regularly, since Yangyang always tried to cut a deal with the most irritable vendors and Yukhei often had to step in and make peace.

“Yukhei!” Yangyang said, wiping grease from his hands as they approached the hangar. “What are you doing out here?”

“I need a favor,” Yukhei replied. “A big one.”

“Well, I think I owe you after last time.” Yangyang grinned. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Ten.”

“I need your help fixing a ship,” Ten blurted. “A bit of an...unconventional ship.”

Yangyang frowned. “Unconventional?”

“You saw what the sky did about a week ago, didn’t you?” Yukhei asked. “Ten came from... _that.”_

“What, like, some kind of wormhole?”

Ten nodded. “Exactly.”

“No way.” Yangyang flipped his grease rag over his shoulder. “You’re both yanking my chain.”

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

Yangyang’s eyes cut between them, dubious. “...What kind of spacecraft are we talking about?”

“It’s an X-1 based model with FTL capabilities.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not.” Ten took a step forward. “And it’s incredibly important that it gets fixed so I can return home. There’s a device inside that collected data only traveling through a wormhole can access.”

Yangyang put his hands on his hips. He looked at Yukhei, then back at Ten, then shook his head.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Moving the ship to the hangar took an entire day, five of Yangyang’s buddies from the city, and an ancient car-carrier trailer that Yangyang, when asked, only answered how he managed to get his hands on with a crude hand gesture.

When they extracted Johnny’s body, Ten looked the other way.

Yukhei paid a messenger from the trade center to take a note back to the motel, guilt swimming in his gut; he had a habit of running off when he needed space but this was bigger. He made a promise to beg for forgiveness when it was all over.

“So,” Yangyang began over the night’s rations. He and Ten had been in the ship all day; Yangyang lent Ten a pair of goggles that were pushed back into his hair, exposing his forehead.

Ten’s eyes were focused on his food, eyelashes fanning out against his cheek. He looked...

_Pretty._

“...Where exactly _do_ you come from?”

Yukhei faded out of his thoughts at Yangyang’s question before focusing on his food again in a panic.

“Well, we tried to pinpoint a universe that would be as similar to ours as possible,” Ten replied. “So, it’s not too different from yours. Just a little less...”

“Fucked?” Yukhei offered, and Yangyang laughed.

“You could say that,” Ten answered, smiling. “And our tech is further along. Obviously.”

“I’ve never seen a fragmentor like that. It’s almost... _alien.”_

“I guess calling me an alien wouldn’t be too far off the mark.”

“Damn,” Yukhei said, stretching out on his back on the floor. “I used to dream about aliens. Never thought I’d get to meet one.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Ten replied.

After eating, Yangyang boiled water over a fire to fill the small tub at the back of the little rooms he’d constructed in the hangar. He joked about both of them smelling like death, and Yukhei caught a flash of something—grief?—across Ten’s features.

“You can go first,” he told Ten, who smirked.

“I don’t think you’ll want the bathwater after I use it. Have you _seen_ the state of my hair?”

Yukhei laughs. “It’s fine. I’ll wash up with some water from the tank.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Yukhei went to the front room, which was filled with books, and sat down on a cushion to read one. He still felt like he shouldn’t leave Ten entirely alone, what with—

 _“Ow!_ Fucker!”

Yukhei perked up, startled. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ten called. “I’m just—my shoulder is still fucked up, I can’t reach my hair.”

There was only a curtain separating the two rooms, and Yukhei could hear Ten splashing around, trying to adjust.

“Do you...want help?”

There was a silence. Then, quietly, almost meekly,

“...Maybe.”

Yukhei swallowed and stood, hesitating just behind the curtain. “I’m gonna come in now, okay? I won’t look.”

“Okay.”

Yukhei stepped behind the curtain, eyes on the ceiling. Ten directed him over to the tub and Yukhei knelt before rolling up his sleeves, eyes trained determinedly on the back of Ten’s head; he took the bar of soap from Ten and lathered it in his hands, then threaded his fingers through Ten’s hair. In the silence, Ten made a quiet sound of pleasure and Yukhei’s heart leapt into his throat.

Ten thanked him when the soap was washed out of his hair and Yukhei returned to the hangar with fire in his belly.

And so the days began to pass. Yukhei went out to scavenge during the day, then made runs to the trade center, sometimes with a handwritten list of parts from Yangyang. He and Yangyang were familiar, yes, but he’d never been such a close witness to Yangyang’s work.

“He’s a genius,” Ten said when Yukhei was helping him stretch out his shoulder. “Why he’s hiding out here alone is beyond me.”

“He’s never liked being told what to do,” Yukhei replied, but quietly, he wondered the same.

He saw Ten looking at Yangyang when Yangyang spoke passionately about his own projects, with a kind of checked-out, reverent gaze and a faint smile. There was unmistakable jealousy that rose up in Yukhei, but also...something else, something that made him feel like he was on the edge of a very tall building.

It made sense when Yangyang kissed him.

“What the fuck was that?” Yukhei asked in a whisper. Yangyang’s face was still close to his, flushed with bootleg moonshine.

“Sorry,” Yangyang replied. “I—I mean, I’ve always—”

“—But Ten likes you.”

“What? Don’t...you like Ten?”

“Is it that obvious?”

Yangyang bit his lip. “Well, if you also like me, and Ten also likes you...”

His looked nervous as Yukhei studied him. Yangyang was always a loose cannon, an untouchable storm.

“Fuck it,” Yukhei said, and kissed him.

It was about two weeks after the three of them began sharing a bed that Ten’s memory started to slip.

At first, it was just the name of the odd wrench he and Yangyang often used. But it soon moved onto names of the parts they were trying to assemble, then the way those parts fit together.

When Ten forgot Johnny’s name, he began to panic.

“It must be trans-dimensional sickness,” he muttered. “Or I hit my head somehow, and—”

“It’s okay,” Yangyang reassured him with a hand on his back. “The ship’s almost done. The most important thing is getting you back, right?”

Ten nodded, exhaling. “Right.”

He and Yangyang sped up their work, often staying in the hangar from sunrise until early the next morning. Yukhei tried to help where he could, but Ten’s frustration stilted the progress that they’d been steadily making; Yukhei found Yangyang working on the ship alone more and more often.

When the ship was finished, Ten sat, blank-faced, in the cockpit.

“I don’t remember the startup sequence.”

Yukhei was silent. Yangyang was silent, too, frozen behind the pilot’s chair.

“I don’t remember it,” Ten murmured, voice breaking. “Even if I did, I—all those years of piloting—all of it, gone—”

“Hey, hey.” Yukhei moved around to take Ten in his arms, drawing him in as he began to sob. “Just...take a rest. You’ve been working for days, maybe if you just—”

“I can’t afford to rest!” Ten scrubbed angrily at his face. “This is my one purpose, the only thing I’ve been training to do my entire life—”

“Don’t say that.” Yangyang’s voice trembled like Yukhei had never heard it. “This isn’t your only purpose.”

Ten looked up as Yangyang knelt beside him, taking his face in his hands.

“Regardless of whether you make it back or not,” Yangyang continued, “this was never your only purpose.”

Yukhei grasped one of Ten’s hands in his and watched Yangyang do the same. Ten didn’t say anything more but he held on tight to them, both of them, like he knew that the fight was over; like he was ready to reach for the eject button and trust his parachute.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thank you for reading!


End file.
